ACLU sues Obama administration over NSA surveillance

The American Civil Liberties Union sued the US Government, after it became known that the National Security Agency has routinely received phone call data pertaining to millions of customers subscribed to the telecom company Verizon.

The Guardian newspaper revealed a Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court document compelling Verizon to provide the NSA
with metadata on the phone calls of subscribers on a daily basis.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald has since published more details about
the NSA’s doings, and last week a 29-year-old former CIA
contractor named Edward Snowden took credit for the leaks. He has
since gone into hiding and is the target of a Department of
Justice investigation.

Critics are calling the NSA’s practice an example of blanketing,
dragnet surveillance that has the potential to freeze First and
Fourth Amendment rights, while others are coming forward with
their own lawsuits.

Larry Klayman, the founder of Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch,
filed a lawsuit together with Charles and Mary Ann Strange, the
parents of Navy SEAL Michael Strange, who was killed in
Afghanistan in 2011.

According to the complaint, the plaintiffs allege they were
denied “reasonable expectation of privacy, free speech and
association, right to be free of unreasonable searches and
seizures, and due process rights.” The complaint goes on to
say their phone records were accessed in particular because of
their “criticism of the Obama administration.”

Sen. Rand Paul and Rep. Justin Amash have indicated that they
want class action lawsuits against the NSA to reach the Supreme
Court.

Meanwhile, 85 groups — including Reddit, the Mozilla Foundation,
and the Electronic Frontier Foundation — formed Stop Watching Us,
which started a petition against PRISM, the NSA’s online
data-mining program. The petition reads: “The revelations
about the National Security Agency’s surveillance apparatus, if
true, represent a stunning abuse of our basic rights. We demand
the US Congress reveal the full extent of the NSA’s spying
programs.”

Now the ACLU wants the program stopped altogether, and is taking
their fight to federal court.

The battle begins

ACLU, the non-profit organization, asked the United States
District Court for the Southern District of New York to examine
the NSA/Verizon scandal leaked by Snowden, condemning the
revelations as illegal, unconstitutional and alarming.

“Collecting those details — ‘metadata’ that reveals who people
talk to, for how long, how often and possibly from where — allows
the government to paint an alarmingly detailed picture of
Americans' private lives,” ACLU legal fellow Brett Kaufman
wrote in a blog post that accompanied a copy of the complaint.

Kauffman said that the ACLU should have good standing to
challenge the collection of phone data because the group is a
customer of Verizon Business Network Services, suggesting the
government has been able to regularly see who staffers
communicate with other information that could be used to target
persons without demonstrating probable cause.

“As an organization that advocates for and litigates to defend
the civil liberties of society's most vulnerable, the staff at
the ACLU naturally use the phone — a lot — to talk about
sensitive and confidential topics with clients, legislators,
whistleblowers and ACLU members,” Kauffman wrote. “And
since the ACLU is a VBNS customer, we were immediately confronted
with the harmful impact that such broad surveillance would have
on our legal and advocacy work.”

Kaufmann went on to call the collection of photo data
demonstrates the government’s abuse of Section 215, a provision
in the post-9/11 Patriot Act that allows the Justice Department
to collect intelligence involving US citizens via a modification
to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The ACLU wants the
court to acknowledge that the mass call tracking program operated
by the NSA violates Section 215 and have the call records purged.

“The ACLU's complaint filed today explains that the dragnet
surveillance the government is carrying out under Section 215
infringes upon the ACLU's First Amendment rights, including the
twin liberties of free expression and free association. The
nature of the ACLU's work — in areas like access to reproductive
services, racial discrimination, the rights of immigrants,
national security and more — means that many of the people who
call the ACLU wish to keep their contact with the organization
confidential. Yet if the government is collecting a vast trove of
ACLU phone records—and it has reportedly been doing so for as
long as seven years — many people may reasonably think twice
before communicating with us.”

In the actual 11-page document, ACLU attorneys are much clearer
with how they believe the mass tracking of phone records hinders
them from doing their job in full.

“In ongoing litigation, plaintiffs often communicate with
potential witnesses, informants or sources who regard the fact of
their association or affiliation with plaintiffs as confidential.
Particularly in their work relating to national security, access
to reproductive services, racial discrimination, the rights of
immigrants and discrimination based on sexual orientation and
gender identity, plaintiffs’ work often depends on their ability
to keep even the fact of their discussions with certain
individuals confidential. Similarly, plaintiffs often communicate
with government and industry whistleblowers, lobbyists,
journalists and possible advocacy partners who consider the
confidentiality of their associations with plaintiffs essential
to their work.”

“Often, the mere fact that plaintiffs have communicated with
these individuals is sensitive or privileged,” the complaint
alleges.

President Barack Obama has defended the program since the leaks
emerged last week, both personally and through the White House
press secretary. The lawsuit lists FBI Director Robert Mueller,
Attorney General Eric Holder, Director of National Intelligence
James Clapper, NSA Director Keith Alexander and the Central
Intelligence Agency’s Chuck Hagel as defendants.

Hours before the lawsuit came out on Tuesday, White House press
secretary Jay Carney spoke highly of the NSA’s programs.

“As you heard the president say on Friday, he believes that we
must strike a balance between our security interests and our
desire for privacy,” said Carney. “He made clear that you
cannot have 100 percent security and 100 percent privacy, and
thus we need to find that balance.”

“He believes, as commander-in-chief, that the oversight
structures that are in place to ensure that there is the proper
review of the types of programs we have in place, authorized by
Congress through the PATRIOT Act and FISA, do strike that
balance,” he said.